Per Electronista and TechCrunch, phone unlocking without carrier permission is now illegal in the United States. A 90-day transition period, permitting the practice after an exemption added to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was reversed in October, has now run out. The expiration of the exemption now forces customers to either ask and potentially pay carriers for unlocking services, or to buy phones that have been unlocked beforehand.

The exemption was put in place after a campaign by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2010. Three exemptions were applied for, including making jailbreaking legal and the renewal of an existing exemption that permitted phone unlocking. In October, the U.S. Copyright Office and the Library of Congress reviewed and then overturned the unlocking exemption, citing the relative ease for consumers to either get an unlocked handset or to unlock a phone through a carrier. A 90-day transition period was then put in place, which has since ran out.

Penalties for unlocking, as outlined by CTIA, range from the carrier’s “actual damages and any additional profits of the violator”, to a court-awarded statutory damages of between US$200 and US$2500 per individual unlock, on the Civil Penalties side. Criminal penalties would see violators fined at most US$500,000 or imprisoned for up to five years, or both, for a first offense, with the values doubled for subsequent offenses.

In light of the unlocking exemption’s closure, a “We The People” petition asking for the Librarian of Congress to rescind the decision or to make unlocking permanently legal, has gathered over 25,000 signatures.

Per AppleInsider, Apple on Saturday released a fifth iOS 6.1 beta to developers, continuing the testing phase of the company’s mobile OS that will bring users a number of features, including enhanced mapping options and Siri-integration, when it launches later this year.

While rumors claimed Apple would soon rollout an iOS 6.1 Golden Master, the beta supplied to developers today is not the finalized version that traditionally heralds an imminent public release.

Apple made the first iOS 6.1 betas available to developers in November of 2012, two months after iDevice users were given access to iOS 6. The version change came with a number of all-new features like the Apple-designed maligned Maps app, built-in Facebook integration, Photo Stream and Passbook, among others.

Past beta iterations revealed that iOS 6.1 will offer an enhanced Map Kit framework that will allow users to search for map-based place names and points of interest with natural language strings. In an example given by a developer with access to the beta, a search for “coffee” returned the location and corresponding information of nearby coffee shops.

Additionally, iOS 6.1 will offer Fandango movie ticket purchases through Siri and refined iCloud security steps when setting up a new device.

The latest release comes over a month after the fourth iOS 6.1 beta arrived in mid-December alongside fresh developer versions of Apple TV software and Xcode.

Per AppleInsider, despite severe constraints throughout the holiday quarter, supply of Apple’s iPad mini is finally catching up with demand as the Online Apple Store is now quoting ship-by dates of 3-5 business days.

The change comes one week after Apple kicked off sales of cellular-enabled versions of the iPad mini in China, a market thought to be a major player in the company’s future growth. At the time of launch, availability stood at two weeks for the Chinese market and one week for the U.S.

Supply of the hot-selling 7.9-inch tablet has been constrained since the device went on sale in October, with brisk sales amounting to quick stockouts on Apple’s online store. The company announced that the iPad mini sold three million units over its first weekend on sale.

In early December, iPad mini availability improved as quoted Online Apple Store shipment estimates fell to one week for the first time since launch.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in the company’s quarterly earnings conference call in October that he thought the smaller iPad, along with the fourth-gen iPad and iPad 2, would be “extremely attractive” stand-ins for PCs. During Apple’s most recent conference call for the first fiscal quarter of 2013, Cook said suppliers were having difficulty meeting high demand, but a balance could be reached by the end of the upcoming quarter.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

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OnyX, Titanium Software’s popular freeware multifunction utility for Mac OS X, has been updated to version 2.6.7. The new version, a 16.9 megabyte download via MacUpdate, adds the following fixes and changes:
- Bug while updating corrected.

- Bug while creating the locate database corrected.

- Bug with the Chinese version corrected.

- Checking the SMART Status improved.

- Checking the volume improved.

- Progress bar more accurate.

- New replacement icon.

- Some minor bugs corrected.

OnyX 2.6.7 requires an Intel-based processor and OS X 10.8 or later to install and run.

If you’ve tried the new version and have any feedback, please let us know in the comments.